Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
IAIN
“Earth to Iain …”
“I don’t think he’s listening.”
Fingers snapped in front of Iain’s face.
“What?” He scowled at the two sitting across from him, more tuned in to the folk song being sung in a corner by a gaggle of half-drunk older men than he was to his friends.
Cai burrowed into his gaze like he could read his mind, tapping his own temple. “Where did you go?”
“Nowhere,” Iain bristled.
Somewhere. A place he shouldn’t be thinking of as much as he’d found himself doing this week.
“That answers that question then.” Aron leaned his elbows on the sticky pub table. “Go on, who is she?”
Iain’s fingers flexed around the glass of his cold beer. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“The redhead you were moving boxes for on Sunday.”
Shit . How did Aron know that?
He’d done the two-minute drive from Ms Vera’s house to Maisie’s new flat back and forth at least four times, which involved parking at the side of the one-way street in the centre of town and Maisie staying with the car while he ran up and down the steps until the boot was empty of boxes. And he had no clue why. He didn’t know this woman, but when Vera cornered him on their last hike, he’d found it impossible to say no to lending a fourth and fifth hand to the duo’s functioning three.
His friends from his rugby team stared at him under the dim pub lights, smug tilts in their lips like they thought he had a secret woman all of a sudden. He could either pass it off, which would be more suspicious, or he could play things down. So that’s what he did.
“She’s the granddaughter of one of the women I hike with,” he said and slowly drank his beer to give himself longer to think.
“She mustn’t have a fella if you were helping her on Dydd Santes Dwynwen ? * of all days,” Aron mocked in his thick, rolling accent. “That’s so kind of you, Iain.”
“You sound like a child.” Iain swiped foam from the hair over his lip, ignoring the mention of that particular day.
Cai’s head which twisted like a barn owl revealed he hadn’t seen him helping Maisie. “Who is this woman?”
No, no. Iain wasn’t doing that. He wouldn’t subject Maisie to these two abject flirts. “I’m not telling you her name.”
“She’s about yay tall” — Aron jabbed his hand at Iain’s armpit — “lots of bright-red curls. Big personality, if you know what I’m saying.”
“Alright, that’s enough.”
“Hey, I didn’t mean it in a bad way.” Aron was a teasing arse but never malicious. “I can just see why you’d like her, that’s all. She’s right up your street.”
“I don’t like her,” Iain said too quickly before regretting it. “Not like that anyway.”
The lie came so easily. It was like he’d practised it every time he passed his bathroom mirror since Sunday. No, it wasn’t like that at all – that was the truth.
He’d met her twice and yet Maisie Moss had shaken the foundation he’d put down for himself in this town – the one that he’d intended for permanent bachelorhood whilst his life was such a mess. Those feelings were trouble. With the way that she kept on surprising him, she made him feel ten years younger – the man who he’d let himself be when he’d been freed from his old world. When she’d dived tits first to the floor, he hadn’t laughed like that in … He couldn’t even put a timescale on it.
He didn’t need Maisie around, but he couldn’t not be around her. Why else would he have spent his Sunday building furniture and cleaning her flat top to bottom just to have had those hours in her presence?
Because before they’d even said goodbye that first day, he’d wanted to see her again, even though he wasn’t ready for a woman in his life like that.
And damn it, now he was too intrigued.
Cai gestured across the pub. “Is that her?”
Iain whipped around, and the speed that his head spun flung his brain somewhere behind him, smattered it against the wall when his gaze landed on searching eyes and pretty, plump lips.
It was Maisie alright, wearing a bright-marigold, polka dot dress and black leggings tucked into boots, glowing against a backdrop of deep-red pleather and natural brown furniture.
“That’s her alright.” Aron chuckled into his pint.
“She looks alone,” Cai said.
“If only there was someone in here she knew.”
“Shut up,” Iain hissed at the pair of them before they drew Maisie’s attention. The last thing that he needed was for these two shit-stirrers to embarrass him for a laugh.
Cai nudged his knee under the table. “Go talk to her, bring her over.”
“To you idiots? No.” If he wanted to be made to look like a fool, he’d rather do it himself than leave it to their hands.
Aron sat up straighter, his eyes trained beyond where Maisie stood waiting by the door. “Oh look, Owen Thomas is looking at her too.”
Fuck no.
“He’s getting up,” Cai sing-songed.
Iain got up. If he could save Maisie from the local ‘use them and lose them’ man-child that was Owen Thomas, then he had to. Maisie could hold her own, but she had absolutely no idea what was coming for her.
He made two steps when the front door opened again, and Maisie helped Vera, Ronnie, and a gaggle of the elders from the hiking group come through.
“Shit.” Iain sat his arse back down before any of them saw him tucked in a corner behind the bar.
It’d been strange enough that Ms Vera had cornered him into helping Maisie move out of her house last weekend. With everyone watching him, he couldn’t have said no. The same kind of thing would happen again if they saw him here, and he’d end up having to join them for the rest of the night. Cai and Aron and Maisie, too.
Nope. He wouldn’t do it.
“What did you back down for?” Aron pressed.
Iain took a long gulp of his beer and ignored the question.
The pair started giggling to themselves like schoolgirls.
“He’s got a crush.” Cai bumped Aron’s shoulder.
“Yep.”
“Shut it.” Iain gripped his glass so hard it should crack.
“He does.”
“Definitely.”
“What am I supposed to bring to a woman, hm?” Their ribbing made something in Iain snap, and his friends shut their mouths. “I’ve got no savings, a job I’m getting fired from in seven weeks, a tiny little squat of a house, and nothing to my name. I managed to fuck up one relationship already because I was truthful from the start, and I’m just going to do it again.”
Sure, he could try to give his heart away once more, but he’d rather be alone than disappointed, which is all that he had ever been.
“She’s incredible.” He exhaled. “I’d only ruin her.”
Pity pinched Cai’s brow. “Come on Iain, that’s not fair.”
“Me and Ted are better off alone and she would see sense to stay well away from me.” Iain didn’t want to hear any more about it. “I am not interested in Maisie Moss.”
MAISIE
Inside the pub was like a furnace. A welcoming warmth wrapped around Maisie and snapped the thoughts of rain away. She didn’t know how she’d been dragged to this. Vera had mentioned a pub quiz which was a standard monthly occurrence for the hiking group, and in an effort to make some friends her own age here, she’d agreed to come.
She hoped that Iain would be here. He’d given up nearly half of his Sunday to help her – though Vera had fed him in the process – when he didn’t have to, so she’d planned to buy him a drink if he showed up.
Maybe she’d hoped tonight could settle the piece of her heart that missed home, too.
The pub was crowded for the quiz, and she’d gotten stuck near the doorway trying to see if Iain was there, if not because of the fact that the bar queue extended right towards her. She’d have thought she’d be able to spot him instantly if he were standing, but she couldn’t find his hair or his beard amongst the bar congestion.
“I can get the door—” Vera’s voice was muffled by fifty-year-old glass.
“Here, let me open?—”
“I’ve got it.” Maisie gently pushed the door away from her for her nain to come through, and Ronnie looked insulted that she’d gotten there before him.
They’d waited outside in the drizzle for a few others from the hiking group to gather, and when the seven of them shuffled inside, Maisie’s plan to find Iain before any elder, especially Vera, could watch her do it drifted off in a cloud of smoke.
“Maybe we should attempt to find a table first?” she suggested.
“It’ll be round the side, sweetie, towards the back room. That’s where the quiz happens.”
“Okay … Well I’ll get us some drinks. What would you like?”
Maybe she could hunt for Iain too in the process. It might be the only chance she’d get.
With drinks orders mentally noted – easy enough for four G in fact she was used to it, the inferior feeling people put on her; but she’d never been written off as an option so boldly like that with tens of people all around. Never before she’d actually made a move to proposition a man for a date.
Why was he even talking about her in the first place? Maisie tried not to jump to any conclusions as whatever conversation Iain held silenced. She didn’t know why he’d said what he’d said, but given that he hardly knew her, the reason was probably the same that any other man would have in this beer-stained room:
She was too much.
Too much bounce in the step she always tried to be confident with.
Too much body that was so hard to apparently love.
Too much overthinking and making tiny details her best friends.
All her life she’d put her personality out there first so no one would change their minds on her later. Did Iain assume that she’d been trying to date him? Why would he think that when none of the reasons for why they’d ended up sharing space twice had actually been her fault?
Slowly, she drew her chin towards her shoulder, hoping that the dim, humming lights of the corner of the bar would help her fade away.
Iain had his back completely to her, wearing a chequered fleece in various shades of grey, sat at a table tucked up against a panelled wall with two other men. All three of them were burly, too big for their chairs with bulks of muscle – men that Maisie would stay away from if she were back home purely because she wouldn’t know what to do with them.
She couldn’t be certain, but the two she’d never seen before looked like rugby players; one with shaven down, coiled hair and a mischievous slant in his dark-lipped smile, the other with hair not unlike Iain’s except for blonde. The tattoos down his arm were so dark against the stark white of his skin.
Then there was Iain. She couldn’t even see his face while he took a sip of his pint, but she expected he’d be wearing that perpetual frown to accompany his declaration of how he wasn’t interested in her. Her chest ached while the flicker of hope she’d been holding onto faded away.
“Cooey! Iain, dear.” Vera’s high-pitched voice parting the sea of patrons was like a damn caricature of itself.
“Shit,” Maisie spluttered.
Abandoning her spot at the bar, she tried to intercept the incoming whirlwind. Iain didn’t need to know she’d been here behind him, though she’d like to see the look on his face when he realised she might’ve heard him loud and clear – but she was too late.
“Mrs Moss.” He stood from his seat to let Vera give him a sideways, grandmotherly hug. Which was strange in itself, to see the man with such a blunt tongue bend like a gentle, willowy giant around the old woman with a broken wrist. “Nice to see you tonight.”
Vera pulled back with her hands on his arms. “I thought maybe she might have gotten lost, but it looks like she found you.”
“She?”
“Hi,” Maisie said flatly, outing herself.
The look on his face as Iain’s head whipped around was exactly as she’d hoped. His green eyes flashed, dots connecting within them one by one; Vera’s ‘looks like she found you’ joined with the realisation she’d stood behind him, and the likelihood that he hadn’t forgotten what he’d so fervently declared ten seconds ago doubled.
Iain’s throat bobbed. “Maisie.”
That was it? Just her name?
It didn’t matter, he’d already said enough tonight.
Maisie knew it wasn’t fair to be so stung – men didn’t owe her their attraction or attention – but those nettles that she’d fallen into should’ve hurt more than his comment did. It wasn’t her fault that experience had made her tender when it came to being more interested in someone than she let on. She was so silly to think she could’ve had a chance with a man like Iain. What had she shown of herself for him to be interested in? All she’d done so far was display how inept she was at pretty much everything he’d seen her do.
She didn’t even smile as she said his name in return. “Iain.”
His friends’ eyes ping-ponged back and forth between them, Vera oblivious to what she’d missed.
It was there on Iain’s face as their gazes collided, how he tried to decipher if she’d been near enough to hear what he’d said. Maisie wasn’t going to make a deal of it here. She should be mature enough to tuck her tail with grace and not make a deal out of it at all.
“Moo Moo? Meet Aron and Cai.” Vera had the tattooed, blonde one by the cheek. “I taught them when they were little lambs in primary school.”
To them, Maisie did smile. “Hi, I’m Maisie. Vera’s granddaughter.”
“We know who you are, love, don’t worry,” the one with the deep complexion said with that up-to-no-good smile she’d seen from five feet away. “I’m Cai. This one’s Aron.”
“Nice to meet you both.”
Iain still stood between them, his chin turned down but his eyes burrowing into the side of Maisie’s head like a pup who knew he’d done wrong.
“Are you joining in on the quiz?” she asked his friends.
“We weren’t planning on—” Iain started.
“Yes,” Aron cut him off. “We are.”
“You should join us at our table.” Vera waved for them to stand up. “There’s plenty of space.”
It didn’t take much convincing. Cai and Aron unfurled from their chairs and confirmed Maisie’s suspicion that they played rugby alongside Iain (who she didn’t look at once). They looked her up and down with appreciation and she let them, giving as good as she got. She was single, after all. Unattached. And these two looked like they could be a good time.
They each wrapped an arm around Vera’s shoulders, heads dipped in conversation, and parted the crowd like local celebrities.
Maisie went to follow, but a hand slipped around her wrist, and she looked down to find it belonged to Iain. Calloused skin so deliciously scratching her own sent shivers scattering across her arms.
Rationally, she shouldn’t feel anything pleasant at all.
“Are you okay?” he asked, the low tone of his voice something she’d only heard once before.
“I’m fine,” she said, making a point to look him in the eye. “Excited for the quiz. It should be interesting .”
* ? Saint Dwynwen’s Day